hadley] RELATION OF NATURE-STUDY TO CLUB WORK 55 



With such an aim for our work the ideals of Nature-Study and 

 the ideals of Boys' and Girls' Club work should be similar. But 

 as they are being taught now, they are not. 



The Nature-Study teacher has two groups of ideals as the back- 

 ground for his work. First the social benefit to the community at 

 large and second the individual development of the child. 



Let us cite a few instances that will remind us how a teacher can 

 be of use to a community thru Nature-Study work. How large a 

 proportion of our population knows the economical importance of 

 the mosquito, the fly, the rat, the bird? 



Our eagerness to Americanize our people can be satisfied to a 

 certain extent, right here in a most beautiful and unostentatious 

 way. Teach the boys and girls the romance of the building of the 

 Panama Canal. France, who has done such wonderful things, 

 failed in building the Panama Canal because she did not fight the 

 mosquito. Any child will be fired with enthusiasm for his country, 

 when he learns the story of Dr. Lazear and his brave associates who 

 offered their lives in the fight against yellow fever, by permitting 

 themselves to be bitten by a mosquito. 



Here we have one instance where America has made the world 

 a better place to live in. Yellow fever, as a plague, has been con- 

 quered thru the knowledge of the life history of the mosquito. By 

 becoming acquainted with the mosquito, the building of the Panama 

 Canal was made possible. The Panama Canal brings Europe, the 

 Americas and Asia nearer together by thousands of miles. The 

 better acquainted we become with the peoples of the world, the 

 better we shall understand their point of view and the less possi- 

 bility of war will be the result. The influence of the life history of 

 the mosquito is boundless. 



Does the bureau of public health in your city have a chart of the 

 open vaults? The nature-study teacher is not doing his full duty 

 unless there is such a chart. Locate the cases of typhoid fever. 

 Is there any relation between the dots on the chart and the illness 

 of the neighborhood? In most cases there is a connection and the 

 connecting link is the fly. 



The relation of rats to bubonic plague, of mice to the enormous 

 loss of grain, of birds to the consumption of weed seeds — all con- 

 nect nature-study with the interests of the community. They 

 make the bond of school, home and town closer. Any spark of 

 civic or national pride kindled in the boys' and girls' will build the 

 fires of Americanization. 



